Oxcars and Free Culture Forum 2011
Networks for a R-evolution

27 to 29 of October 2011 - Barcelona*

**Three days to think about what the Internet has done for us, and what we
can now do for it ;-).*

2011 is the year when the consciousness of a global network has
emerged. The massive and strategic use of social and digital networks
has allowed the movement of citizen empowerment to step up a notch,
and has facilitated a viral uprising of civil society in many parts
of the world. The struggles to defend the Internet have shown to be a
fertile breeding ground for such uprisings.

The #15M movement within the *#spanishrevolution* is organized online.
By the same token, one of its biggest strengths is the feedback
process that happens between the network and the streets, between the
internet and the men and women gathering in streets and squares.

*We have to continue promoting, facilitating and improving the
efficient use of the Internet to achieve mobilization and direct
participation.*

During the previous edition of the FCForum it was already discussed
that the intense struggles by civil society within the Spanish
state to defend the Internet against the Sinde Law (a law to stop
downloading) were the starting point for a larger action.

*For 3 years now, the OXCARS and the FCForum*, held in Barcelona, have
provided international meeting spaces in which to build and coordinate
common tools for issues regarding free culture and the Internet. The
FCForum gathers the main organizations and active voices that are
working on such issues, while it is also an open space for all those
who wish to understand, deepen and participate in the responses before
the pressing challenges that face our connected societies.

This year, the FCForum will focus, inevitably, on the experience of
the 15M movement as a case study that can be exported to the global
arena.

*The intention of the FCForum 2011 is for all participants to analyze
and build the best tools that the struggle needs at this point, both
for its organization and for the impact it aims to have here in Spain,
as case of study to be applied more globally.* * Some of the questions
that we will discuss this year are:*

Which tools and methods of online organization and communication have
allowed the emergence of the #15M movement? How can these practices be
improved? How have social networks facilitated a change in the respect
shown between people from different groups? What dangers threaten
the neutral, open Internet which we know and want to preserve, at
the local and global levels? How has the Internet facilitated the
creation of new ways of producing and spreading culture? How can some
of those methods become a way to avoid artists being used as an excuse
to privatize the Web? What should we do with SGAE (the main management
organization in Spain) now that its directives have been taken to
court ;-)?

*This gathering of 2 days will be preceded, as always, by the OXCARS,
the biggest free culture event of all time. A great celebration of
free culture that will serve as a warm-up event.*

We believe it will be a very useful space for the empowerment of the
movement.

We welcome and await you all.

This year we will be helped along in our discussions, amongst many
others, by John Perry Barlow, who in 1996 lit the spark with his
'declaration of independence in ciberspace', Alex de la Iglesia, who
stepped down from his post as Director of the Film Academy in protest
against the Sinde law, as well as many of the hackers and people who
have created tools to assist the actions of the 15M movement, such as
the network N-1.cc.

*Three days to think about what the Internet has done for us, and what we
can now do for it ;-).*